


My Favourite Mistake

by syncopate (orphan_account)



Category: SHINee
Genre: Affairs, Angst, Cheating, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6806644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/syncopate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's an affair, that's all he is. And maybe it's time to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There were nights where Kibum would squeeze his eyes tighter and pretend to still be asleep. Because he didn’t want to watch him leave.

 

A soft mouth would press on his forehead just before the door opens and closes with a quiet creak. And he knows it meant  _ I wish I could stay _ .

 

( _ You are a mistake, they all told me that. But your arms captured my soul and I didn’t want to listen.) _

 

It had started as an accident, walking in on his first day and catching his breath. No one had told him he’d want to sleep with his boss. No one had told him he wouldn’t be able to.

 

( _ There’s a ring around your finger; a label, a mark. A smug reminder of someone else’s right to you. But I claim you with my own kind of mark and you fall apart in my bed and those cries, they are my right to own.) _

 

It’s a cliché, a bad one, almost lifted from the pages of a two bit trashy novel. An assistant having an affair with his married boss. How sordid, how despicable. 

 

_ (The first time you told me you wanted me, my heart froze in my chest. Because I could see your wife glaring at me from the framed picture at the side of your desk. But I didn’t know her and I knew you. And I wanted  _ **_you_ ** _.) _

 

It began on a slow winter’s day when the wind was blowing too sharply through branches and the office was in a state of lulled sleepiness. Kibum had been called in for some administrative work that was too easily completed, and they had ended up making lazy conversation about things that didn’t quite matter. Passing the day in slack time. And Jonghyun muttered something under his breath that Kibum shouldn’t have heard, something that shouldn’t have caused heat to pulse low in his stomach. He could almost feel the unmistakable desire collecting over the words. And he shouldn’t have looked up, right into his eyes and whispered something back that sounded like consent.

 

_ (The colour of your eyes is the colour of desire. And you shouldn’t want me, like I shouldn’t want you. But sometimes I think you might be everything I ever wanted.) _

 

He had fucked Kibum against the desk, clothes still half on, Kibum’s cries stifled by Jonghyun’s palm over his mouth. When he came, his teeth closed over Jonghyun’s fingers and Jonghyun orgasmed with a cry of both pain and pleasure, teeth clamping onto Kibum’s shoulder. He told himself it was a one off. Jonghyun’s eyes on his body told him something else.

 

_ (You don’t love me, and I’m not supposed to love you. Together we are a fallacy, a tragedy, an error bigger than both our fates. You are quicksand, and I walk into you on purpose.) _

 

Work becomes a minefield. And Kibum a strategist that has to keep trying to avoid them; the looks that Jonghyun throws his way, that feel like fingers unpeeling every layer of his clothes, the touches that wander too far up his thigh when no one sees, and that one time during a Skype meeting when Jonghyun had unzipped his pants and grabbed hold of his cock and rubbed him to completion as he talked to the client.

 

_ (I want your hands on me all the time. I want you to brand me so the world will know. They call me slut, but if that’s what I need to be to feel your mouth on my body, I will gladly be.) _

 

It’s just sex. Kibum knows that; insatiable, insane sex. And the only thing that Jonghyun loves is his body. But he can’t help himself when he starts falling for the Jonghyun who stays a little while after, who tucks stray hair behind his ears, who laughs at things like a baby’s giggle, and buys little sweets for his colleague’s children. 

 

_ (I don’t hide the bruises, even when you say I have to. And sometimes I let myself cry too loud when you press me against your office wall. I think I want to destroy you. Drag you down with me.) _

 

His colleagues whisper behind judgemental hands now, and he knows they know. That they sometimes cannot hide the sounds that spill out around them like from broken bottles of alcohol, that he cannot hide the need. Kibum doesn’t care, he wears the bites like badges. He wants Jonghyun and he can’t remember how to stop.

 

_ (I want to reach into your chest and pull out your heart, make it beat just for me. I want to own you, have you, hold you. But all I own is your desire, all I am is an illicit drug, a dirty little vice you have to expunge.) _

 

The day she visits is the day Kibum quits. When the company receptionist calls him, Kibum’s lips are stretched around Jonghyun’s cock, his tongue working to pull soft needy groans from Jonghyun’s throat. The voice that Jonghyun uses to answer mutates from strained and hoarse into sober and shocked, and he goes soft in Kibum’s mouth. There’s enough time to pull their clothes up and fix their hair. And Kibum is at his desk, when a beautiful woman strides into Jonghyun’s office. 

 

_ (I want to unhook you from her, tie your life to mine instead. I want to break everything that you hold precious until the only thing you have left is me.) _

 

She glances at Kibum as she walks past his desk. And there’s something cruel and knowing in the depths of the lidded eyes. Then it turns into pity and that cuts sharper than anything else had.

 

_ (She knows. Isn’t that terrifying? Maybe I wear my heart too openly on my shirtsleeve. Maybe you said something once that she understood too well. I’m an interloper, and her eyes tell me the same thing.) _

 

When she drags Jonghyun out of the office, hanging off his arm like a child, Jonghyun is laughing softly. And Kibum knows he can’t pretend any longer.

 

There are two envelopes waiting on Jonghyun’s desk when he comes back from lunch with his wife.

 

_ (If I could, I would cleave to you, throw my world at your feet to do whatever you want with it, with me. But all I will gain is pain. And I think, I am tired of pain. Pull the bandaid off fast, they say.  _

 

_ Goodbye Jonghyun. I never said it, not even when your mouth touched the most private, hidden parts of me, but I loved you. I  _ **_love_ ** _ you.) _


	2. Chapter 2

_ You were an unexpected bump in the endless straightness of my life’s path. I thought I could have you and still keep the rest of my life. Perhaps it’s better that I don’t. _

 

The letter feels heavy in Jonghyun’s hand, the words weighing so much more than just ink and paper, and he wonders if that’s what it feels like to have a human heart beating whole in the center of your palm.

 

_ You mesmerized me, your body and your face. I tell myself it was an accident, a mistake, a sin. That you were a siren I couldn’t say no to. A drug injected directly into my veins. I shouldn’t have begun it. But you smiled and I let myself drown. _

 

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, at least that’s what the saying said. And Jonghyun has never known it to be real until now. It’s ugly, that’s what it is. Craving the body of a boy he doesn’t really love. Wanting to bury himself inside Kibum’s flesh and hope that the drumming of blood in his ears every time those electric eyes looked his way would stop. It has never stopped. Not really. 

 

_ I don’t love you. You’re right. I don’t know if I could, I only know I never let myself. Because all you could be was a fuck, an affair, cooling to that burning coiling heat that clouded my mind when I looked your way. I wanted you, but I didn’t love you.  _

 

Jonghyun’s fingers squeeze creases into Kibum’s letter, and he tries to imagine he’s smudging fingers into his flesh instead. Sometimes he would wonder if there could have been a different path laid out for them, in another universe, where he was free. Because he thinks he could learn to love this boy, this shining boy who sometimes dominated his dreams, with those eyes that could shred your soul. 

 

_ I love her, I do. I think you know that; maybe that’s why you want to leave me. Sometimes I escape from her grasp and hide my senses in the bodies of other willing humans. Humans who want me want in ways she cannot, who make me unravel in ways she does not. And for a while that’s all you were; just another one of those humans. But I always go back to her. Maybe that’s why she pretends she doesn’t know. She always knows.  _

 

Kibum has dimples that form on his cheeks and when he laughs it’s like freedom personified. Kibum talks in his sleep sometimes, soft words that Jonghyun knows he’s not supposed to hear. Kibum has two little dogs that jump up at him every time he opens the door and they recognize Jonghyun now, because Jonghyun’s hands covet the touch of Kibum’s skin and they come together more often than not, clumsy and eager against the door of Kibum’s apartment. 

 

_ You weren’t supposed to mean anything to me.  _

 

Jonghyun has used him, maybe. Because he knows how to recognize love when it’s shining out from under someone else’s eyelashes. And he had seen the love long before Kibum had admitted to it. It didn’t feel wrong, to let him pretend for just those moments that they had forever swirling into the landscape before them. Because Kibum under him, writhing and breathless and incoherent, is a vision he liked creating.

 

_ I am bound to her, just as she is bound to me. And even if I could break the bonds, I wouldn’t. Not for you, not for anyone. She’s mine, and I am hers. It’s been set in stone for longer than I’ve known you. Is it selfish of me, to want to keep you both? Her, to keep my heart, and you, to fuel my desire. _

 

She’s beautiful and sweet and so so precious. But she cannot let him fuck her the way he wants to, the way that makes his insides shudder and his mouth spew loose broken obscenities, the way Kibum does. Kibum who likes to fuck and be fucked the way Jonghyun wants to, Kibum who lets him leave marks and bruises, who scratches and bites back as good as he gets. Kibum who arches into him close close too close, until everything else turns into a muted roar at the back of his head.

 

_ I want you in my bed, under my hands, under my mouth. I want you anywhere, everywhere, I want to leave my brand on you that nothing will erase. I want all of you. But I come to you with open, empty palms, and I know it’s not enough. _

 

Perhaps he doesn’t love her enough, not enough to sacrifice his needs to cater to hers. Maybe his love is too selfish, too self directed. Maybe she’s too giving, to accept this parody of a spouse. But that, perhaps is what they are. 

 

_ I’m an addict and you’re a drug, and I come to you slavish and stupid. There can’t be anything between us, but I want you. Still want you. Want your mouth wet and open on my neck, want your legs wrapped around my waist, want to push into you so hard that the world spins and forgets to breathe. I would tell you I want to keep you, but the only offering I can make you is pain.  _

 

When Kibum comes in later that day, fingers gripping a stack of papers for Jonghyun’s signature, Jonghyun meets his eyes. Something between them fizzles and snuffs out. Jonghyun thinks he can almost see smoke weaving in the air between them, remnants of a flame doused too abruptly. Just as Kibum leaves, he looks back, once. And Jonghyun mouths the reply he knows he’s waiting for. 

 

_ Goodbye Kibum _ .

 

There’s something that snaps shut in a corner of his chest, with a judder that feels almost like agony. 

 

_ Maybe somewhere in another destiny, I could love you and you could love me. _

 


End file.
